1) Please state the limits of legitimate government power.
OK, in a democracy or parliamentary system the limits are defined the the constitution, or charter, or whatever documents define the authority of that government. In a dictatorship, there are no limits.
Oh. OK, then, game over: in Stalin's Russia, it was acceptable to kill ten million kulaks; in Hitler's Germany, it was acceptable to kill six million Jews; and in Nero's Rome, it was acceptable to feed Christians to lions. After all, "in a dictatorship, there are no limits."
3) Please justify mass murder in Iraq on the basis of #1 and #2.
What 'mass murder'? There has been no concerted effort on
anybody's part to commit mass murder in Iraq.
So if I kill 30,000 people who had done nothing wrong, but I wasn't making a "concerted effort" to do so, then no harm, no foul? Your answer, and the Rabbi's, make no sense unless I theorize that you're taking a moral relativist position: whatever they do is what they do; there's no framework within which to judge the actions of governments.
The founders believed very differently, however. They believed that governments exist to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and when they fail to do so, the people have an inalienable right to change it or abolish it. That alone implies strict limits on governments, and indicates that even a dictatorship, if it fails to secure those rights, is immoral and subject to overthrow. Legal thought since at least the Magna Carta has focused on the principle that there are laws transcending the authority of government, and that government is in the wrong if it violates those laws.
You're taking the paradoxical position of claiming allegiance to the founders' vision, while denying the very principle that there's such a thing as unjust government.
--Len.